


just part of the deal

by LiveLaughLovex



Series: to love (and to be loved) [5]
Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Deployment, Established Relationship, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-03
Updated: 2019-01-03
Packaged: 2019-10-03 08:18:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17280431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LiveLaughLovex/pseuds/LiveLaughLovex
Summary: Kono Kalakaua becomes her fiance's ICE contact and has a few panic attacks about it before eventually coming to the correct conclusion.





	just part of the deal

**Author's Note:**

> "I didn't chose this life. I chose him. The life was just part of the deal." - Unknown

Kono went back to Hawaii on the second of January, and the endless yearning for Steve began the very moment her plane touched down in Honolulu. It was more difficult than usual to be apart from him, as he’d been called out on a mission almost as soon as she’d departed Busan and was out of reach for the better part of the following week.

_I’m back and in one piece,_ he messaged her as soon he returned to Chinhae. _No need for you to keep worrying. Love you._

There was no way for her to reject the idea that she’d been worried while he was unreachable. He knew her too well. He knew, better than anyone else, how her heart dropped the moment he left her sight, no matter how many times she’d had to watch him go – or, in some cases, had been the one to leave. He felt the same about her. Perhaps that was one of the many things that made being apart too frequently so damn difficult.

She replaced his father as his ICE in late January. She received her first call from his commander in February. It wasn’t anything to worry about, Joe White assured her, because while Steve’s ruptured eardrum was the result of a bombing in the Middle East, he hadn’t been near enough to the explosion for it to cause any other, more permanent damage.

Kono listened to the man as he spoke, thanked him for the information, and then ended the call with shaking fingers. She hadn’t known Steve was no longer in South Korea until that moment. Finally, John’s quip about not begrudging her the new position in his son’s life made sense.

Her worry skyrocketed in the weeks following that phone call. It took several days for Steve’s ear to heal enough for him to head back out into the field, but the moment he was cleared, he was back out in the thick of it, loving every second. Kono didn’t ask about those hours of his day. She didn’t think her heart – or her blood pressure – could handle her mind’s reception of such information.

Mary Ann took to calling her once a day, just to make sure she was okay, and Kono quickly came to see her future sister-in-law as a godsend. For someone who’d not been in the same room as Steve since she was ten years old, the younger McGarrett certainly seemed to understand how insanity-inducing some of his choices proved to be.

“He’s a McGarrett,” the blonde sighed one evening in early March. She uttered her surname the way others would voice an apology. “Our grandfather died in the Harbor. Dad almost lost a leg in Vietnam. Now Steve’s dodging bullets in Kandahar. Maybe you should pray you have all girls. Or, you know, that there are fewer wars by the time they grow up, because little girls with my brother’s blood are probably going to be just as crazy as little boys.”

“Yeah, that’s – that’s not helpful, Mary,” Kono sighed, staring out at the ocean. She was sitting on the front porch of her mother’s home, the phone on speaker and balanced atop her knees. Victoria was inside, giving her some semblance of privacy, though Kono knew well enough by then that her mother was listening on the other side of the wall.

“I didn’t sign up to be helpful. I signed up to listen to you rant and help you make fun of my brother,” Mary replied. “Look, Kono, I know you’ve been doing this with him for the past five years, but this part of it is even worse. My brother almost gets himself killed a lot, and now you’re going to have to hear about it every single time. Are you sure you’re going to be okay?”

“I’m going to be a McGarrett soon enough,” Kono returned dryly. “Is the insanity something that’ll kick in as soon as the ink dries on the marriage certificate, or…”

“It’s obviously already kicked in a little bit, because you’re still planning on becoming a McGarrett,” Mary muttered just loudly enough for Kono to hear.

“Yeah, you’re not being as quiet as you think you are, Mare,” Kono informed her amusedly. “You do realize you come from the same bloodline as your brother, don’t you?”

“I claim the teachers, and the teachers alone,” Mary returned promptly. “Grandma and Mom were both awesome people who didn’t feel the need to hurl themselves in front of bullets. I think that’s the example I’m going to choose to follow.”

“I have no idea where he is right now,” Kono informed her after a few moments of silence. “And I’ve gotten used to it over the years, but now it’s different. Before, you know, I would hear from you or your dad if he started bleeding out all over somebody over there. Now, though…” She trailed off, shaking her head even though Mary Ann couldn’t see the movement. “I’m the one who’ll have to make those calls if it’s bad enough, and I am not looking forward to that.”

“I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. I didn’t envy Dad. I don’t envy you,” Mary Ann told her bluntly. “Steve’s my brother, and I love him, but he’s also an idiot. I don’t know how Freddie hasn’t strangled him with one of his shoelaces, at this point.”

“Because if Steve wasn’t around, Freddie would have to talk to other people,” Kono sighed in response. “And Freddie hates other people. I don’t even know if he’s completely sure about me after all this time.”

“I don’t know how he feels about me, either,” Mary Ann realized. “I mean, I’ve never met the guy, but-”

“He thinks you’re hot,” Kono informed her, cutting her off in the process. “He admitted it once when he was drunk, and Steve spent at least thirty seconds trying to drown him in his own bottle of beer before realizing it wasn’t going to work.”

Mary scoffed. “Sure, he doesn’t come to see me once in seventeen years, but he can still play the protective brother when he wants to.”

“Mary,” Kono sighed.

“Sorry,” Mary returned, her tone still tinged with bitterness. “I’m on my third glass of wine. One more, and you can no longer hold me responsible for anything I say.”

“All right,” Kono agreed, smirking. “Hey, how’s that Marine doing? You were going to have brunch last week, right?”

“We were. We did. We are no longer speaking,” Mary informed her.

“Well, that went downhill fast,” Kono muttered in surprise.

“I was raised by a military father. I have a military brother. I don’t have the willpower Mom did and you do,” Mary admitted quietly. “I can’t choose to live that kind of life, you know?”

“That’s the thing, Mary,” Kono returned just as softly. “I didn’t choose the lifestyle. I chose him.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve got to say that it seems like you might’ve set yourself up for heartbreak either way.”

“Yeah,” Kono replied, hitting the phone’s home button and staring at a screen devoid of text messages or missed calls. “I think you might be right.”

They continued to talk for a while after that, discussing anything and everything, before Mary Ann’s wine bottle finally ran dry and she decided to turn in for the night. Kono was in the middle of composing an email to Bridget when the phone in her hands began to vibrate, a familiar number flashing across the screen. She accepted it with trembling fingers.

“Hello?”

“Hi,” Steve returned tiredly. Despite his obvious exhaustion, she could still hear the smile in his voice. “I’m alive. Still. And I made it back in one piece.”

“Good,” Kono managed. “I’m glad.”

It was in that moment that she realized, perhaps for the first time, that she didn’t care how long she had to wait for him to come back to her. Every torturous second was worth the feelings coursing through her veins in that moment.

She’d told Mary Ann the truth. She had chosen him. And, in that moment and every other, she was pretty damn sure – and even more proud – of that choice.

**Author's Note:**

> This is actually set before the two works released previously. I was in the middle of editing one of them, as when three thousand words get away from me, I tend to end up hating many of them, when I realized I never really addressed how Kono coped with Steve being away/injured, aside from briefly in one chapter of a previous story. I'll reorder the series soon, but just know that this takes place in early March, while from brussels, with love and that brave and fallen few take place in late March and mid-September 2010, respectively.


End file.
